Here’s how to respond to questions of discrimination against non-Maori –

Dunno what to make of the fuss about the Maori basketball tournament that became the stuff of a Waitangi Day controversy.

Perhaps there’s some confusion about the rules and how they should be interpreted.

This is appropriate for a Waitangi Day controversy because the Treaty of Waitangi – clause two, anyway – is most certainly open to all sorts of interpretation.

It is understandable therefore that a spin doctor in the office of Sports Minister Jonathan Coleman opted to decline comment rather than be lured into denouncing anything that might involve racially discriminatory rules being enforced against non-Maori.

The spin doctor would have recognised that our Government tolerates discrimination against non-Maori, in the spirit of regarding indigenous citizens as special, and so this was an occasion when it was best to stay silent.

The Grumbles will be paying close attention to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. They might have to shift their somewhat conservative thinking on gay rights and succession to the throne once she has given them a steer.

She apparently has been limbering up to sign the Commonwealth Charter tomorrow in her first public appearance since leaving hospital after suffering from a stomach bug

According to a Mail on Sunday report (here), she will make an historic pledge to promote gay rights and ‘gender equality’ in one of the most controversial acts of her reign.

Alf enthusiastically supports the New Plymouth landlord who wants to run a bar for oldies only.

Alas, Alf also cautions that the venture is bound to be torpedoed by publicly funded do-gooders before it can open its doors to a mature clientele.

The do-gooders, of course, are the prats who are paid much too much to serve as Human Rights Commission mandarins and to frustrate sensible business ventures like those proposed by the New Plymouth landlord.

Before the landlord knows it he will be advised he can not bar entry to people on grounds of age, or for all sorts of other reasons.

The awful reality is that he does not have the right to pick and choose his clients, which Alf would have thought was an important right and one worth dying in the ditch for.

It will be the same advice that was given a few months back when a bloke in Paraparaumu had the bright and commendable idea of keeping young louts out of his establishment by imposing an age limit.

The Paraparaumu bloke had the same problem: he had let in young people who couldn’t hold their grog and who tore the place apart when they had a few snorts on board.